Shoulder felt a little better today. So many things I do at work on a regular basis irritate it. I know I should go on a leave of absence to let it heal, but I can't afford to go on disability. Just gonna take it slow with the rehab.

Box squats were done to parallel, with a one second pause at the bottom and about 30-45 seconds of rest between sets. They weren't hard at all, just not as fast as I would have liked. I'm slow out of the hole, so I need to work on that. Everything else felt pretty good. I started adding in standing calf raises at the end of my work outs because my left ankle is preventing me from running, so I am trying to strengthen that area.

Shoulder feels like it's getting better. I found that turning my wrists so my palms are facing in at the bottom of the dumbbell presses relieved some tension from my shoulder. Lock outs felt really easy. I'm pretty sure I could have handled 365 no problem, so that's encouraging. Pull ups were a real grind for some reason.

*denotes from the floorBlocks set to just below knee height. Deadlifts felt really heavy warming up. I was having an issue with my grip on my left hand. My left thumb is pretty mangled and it was bleeding all over the place. There's a really deep crack on the palm side of the knuckle that split open pretty bad, and the pad is pretty much one giant dried blood spot under several layers of skin. However, once I got that sorted out, 275 felt pretty easy. I feel like I could have pulled 280-285 for sure.

Deadlifts were done standing on 4" of blocks. This basically left the bar resting on the top of my feet in the bottom position. This was my first time ever doing deficit deadlifts, and I'm definitely a fan. I'm hoping to pull 250 kilos from this deficit over the next few weeks.

I decided to super set some curls in with my triceps work because I never give my biceps and direct work, and I'm fairly certain what really caused my shoulder to separate in that position was the lack of support from the muscles surrounding it. Until recently I never did any direct work for my biceps, triceps, side or rear deltoids, so now I'm really trying to get them up to par. Nothing heavy, I just wanna pump a bunch of blood into the area. Dumbbell rows were done in Kroc fashion. I did one set to failure with the heaviest dumbbell we have in the gym, dropped it and did the other side, then went back and did each arm again immediately. Felt pretty good.

Hips felt kinda tight today, and my whole posterior chain is still tight as hell from Wednesday. Box squats were done explosively to about 2" below parallel with a one count pause on the box. I have plenty of speed in the top half of my squat, but I'm really slow out of the hole, so I really want to focus on that bottom position. The first two sets of glute ham raises with the weight added were done with the weight plate held over my head, and the last two were done holding it to my chest.

Took last week off. I was just really drained and I had so much stuff I had to take care of, it just made sense. Decided to drop the weight back down and bump the reps back up on bench. I was definitely feeling it in my shoulder. Broke up a brawl between two guys I've never seen in the gym while I was warming up. Definitely got my adrenaline going.

Dumbbell rows were done in a sort of rest/pause set. I did one set, dropped the weight, did the other arm, then immediately went back to the original arm and did another set for each. I was feeling wiped out that day and wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible.

Haven't gone above 230 kilos on deficit deadlifts since I first did them 4.4 and hit 235, so that's disappointing. Hyperextensions were done with a standard 45 lb bar across my neck.

Last Friday, the 20th I got X-rays and an MRI of my shoulder. I got the results on Monday. I have a tear in my rotator cuff. It doesn't go all the way through, so it shouldn't require surgery, just physical therapy, if that's the only problem. However, I went to an orthopedist on Thursday, and he examined me. He agreed with what he saw in the MRI, but he said from a clinical standpoint, based on which positions cause me pain and where I feel it, he's concerned I have a torn labrum, which would absolutely require surgery. He said that wouldn't show up in an MRI unless they injected my shoulder with a special dye. So for the next four weeks I'll be going to PT 3 times/week. After that he's going to examine me again, and determine what we need to do.